Rapidshare eyeing India, to launch legal movie downloads

File hosting service Rapidshare is extremely popular in India, with it being used to share various large-sized files such as movies, games, music, etc. In fact, the company estimates that currently, around 2-3 million of its 40 million daily users are from India.

All of this does mean constant association with the piracy tag, whereas its usage in legitimate file-sharing for corporations is largely overlooked. But company COO Bobby Chang wants to change all that, as he told Medianama that he plans to make the site a one stop shop for games, music, movies and books.

The company is gearing up to globally launch its legal movie-download portal, RapidMovie, this month.

“We are planning to offer free content (free movies, making-ofs and interviews etc) as well as paid content from the film industry, which choose us to distribute or sell their material. We would welcome publishers from India,” Chang said.

RapidMovies will, at first, offer trailers and full length movies in German and English and add more languages, including Indian, after the global launch.

Last year, the company had launched its RapidGames service in India, which offers downloads of games, mods, patches, trailers, etc.

RapidShare is also planning on targetting business-to-business (B2B) companies, who have to send across large file sizes to their clients; for example, a public relations firm might need to send a preview of a certain movie to various distributors and journalists, and an attachment just won’t fit the bill.